Spend XP to cure cancer and be a good person - expensive fluff charms in EvWoD

Our group tends to play big games like Godbound or Exalted where the players get to shape the world to their whims and even when we're not doing that we enjoy games like Fellowship where you are having a large, positive impact on the world by saving it from an evil Overlord or an Empire. We enjoy being able to improve fictional worlds for the better by more direct actions than "slay some monsters". But then when we find cool powers in various systems that let us cure cancer or the like, they never feel as fun as they ought to. Let's figure out why...

Cure cancer or feed the hungry, decisions decisions...

Cure Cancer Powers

So what do I mean by "Cure Cancer Powers"? Basically, any power the character can have that would have a large impact on the world the game takes place in, but will rarely have any tangible effects on the session-to-session gameplay. Take Wholeness-Restoring Meditation from Exalted vs World of Darkness for example:

Cure anything!

Spend a few hours, cure anyone of any debilitating ailment. You would be hailed as a miracle worker and you could change the lives of hundreds of people each year. But how often this would come up in a game you're playing as something important? Maybe once or twice you save some key NPCs and get some good reputation for being such a good surgeon, but in a normal session of being a vampire hunting hero it probably wouldn't come up all that often in comparison to say, being able to punch holes in vampires on the regular.

You could also expand this category into "powers that are narratively cool but rarely useful". For example, Neighborhood Relocation Scheme lets you magically drag one part of the local geography somewhere else:

Drag one location somewhere else.

The power can be really useful in a very specific situation ("Let's break everyone out of Alcatraz by dragging the island onto the shore so they don't drown!"), isn't as universally, unequivocally good as curing cancer, but it still will only come up so often in a game in comparison to being able to punch holes in vampires.

Some other powers that for us fell into these categories:

• Tiger Warrior Training Technique / Legendary Scholar's Curriculum - supercharged teaching, letting you train people to be world leading experts in science or black belt martial artists in a week. Very useful for supercharging some key NPCs, would only be a background thing otherwise.
• You Can Be More - turn mortals into Mages after a very difficult roll - again, uplifts some key NPCs.
• Faultless Ceremony - bless a ceremony with good fortune - thematic, but very nebulous as to how it would impact a game.
• Ceasing to Exist Approach - turn yourself into someone completely different for a time - very useful, but at the same time it requires a lot of upkeep and you can't really just be someone completely removed from the group without hogging a bit too much spotlight.
• Smooth Transition - give people painless deaths - very thematic, but how often would you do this in a regular game?
• The King and the Kingdom: The Thousand and First Hell - create your own pocket realm of existence - very thematic and can serve as a neat mobile base of operation, but at the same time it's mostly creating a walled-garden for yourself really...

Have a look at them yourself if you'd like to get into more details, Exalted vs World of Darkness is available for free!

Cure Cancer Powers in practical games

These kind of powers came up a few times in our games. Most recently, in our upcoming EvWoD game, City of the Bull God, we had our veteran GM Devon play End of Sadness, an Infernal Exalted (hell-themed hero essentially). The core of his character was built around Latter-Day Devil Implants, a charm that lets him graft helltech implants onto people and turn them into Fomori (demon-possessed people). However, he built his character to be benevolent, so while normally Fomori would be monsters, while they work for him they are immune to all the bad effects of being a monster. Then to further refine them, he took Verdant Emptiness Endowment, which let him grant wishes to people once a year each. This would let him remove any and all inherent problems the Fomori would have (such as mental derangements caused by being possessed by an evil spirit, physical deformities, etc.).

The intended loop for the character was to find disenfranchised people that wanted to heal something they wouldn't be able to otherwise (not in an "exploit the weak" kind of way, nor "throw off the disability" way either, but finding people that would seek out this kind of treatment themselves), then working with them for a few years to stabilise them and then letting them go better than ever. It's probably one of the more benevolent ways an Infernal can interact with a person (who can very easily be cruel tyrants).

After one season of the game and investing about 27 XP into this one loop (about half of the generous XP our GM has given us), these Powers and the loop came up a total of about twice. First time in S01E02 when End of Sadness explicitly wanted to show off his character loop and cured one person of her sickness, and a second time in S01E04 when he brought some Fomori dogs to a fight. Beyond that everything else was fluff about how his followers look and operate.

The worst part was that the player noticed that they essentially built themselves a fancy walled garden out of XP and very situational powers that don't bring them joy. Sure, they and the GM could contrive a way for those powers to come into play but that would be pretty obvious to everyone and not make anyone feel better.

A much simpler example of similar Cure Cancer Power usage was in our Heaven for Everyone game, S01E12, where one player decided to buy Instant Treatment Methodology charm that let them do very fast medical treatments and decided to break into a children's hospital to cure everyone there overnight. Really cool thing to do once, not necessarily worth spending 2-3 session's worth of XP to say you've done it.

Another example from City of the Bull God - I played a superpowered university professor Rigel Star. My initial idea for the character was to take Legendary Scholar's Curriculum to be able to churn through dozens of students per week, condensing their entire university learning into days and even taking in underprivileged youths to give them all that education for free to help lift them into a higher position in society. Ultimately however, I decided not to take it because it would be all fluff and nothing actionable in a game where we explore strange supernatural occurrences in Boleskine House, stop evil vampires from preying on people and go to the hollow earth to go back in time to fight nazi mages and werewolves.

A different take - Godbound's Miracles and Changes

Godbound had a different approach to this problem. While sure, some powers could be seen as Cure Cancer Powers (such as Birth Blessing that can cure infertility and give people really healthy children), most ways you would use to improve the world were universally accessible under Dominion Changes. Every player would gather Dominion over time and they could spend it to change the world for the better based on their divine portfolio. So if you were a Godbound of Health, you could cure cancer in a given kingdom, if you had the power of Knowledge you could make everyone in the world literate, while having the power of Sky you could give everyone angel wings.

The system also solved the problem of "powers that are only sometimes useful" by the use of Miracles. While you could buy some specific powers when levelling up, you had access to your entire divine portfolio in a limited fashion. You would have to pay a little bit extra and deal with some other minor constraints but you could, say, feed an entire town with Cornucopian Blessing to address an ongoing famine in the short term.

Of course these approaches might not be universally applicable, I understand that. You could also argue that spending XP on something makes it an important sacrifice - being generous means a lot more when you spend something you have in short supply than when it doesn't inconvenience you. But at the end of the day we're here to have fun together in an RPG, not play "my character shoots themselves in the foot to show what a selfless person they are".

Solutions attract problems

Of course, sometimes when a player picks a power they are signalling to the GM that they want to be using it regularly. In an ideal world, such solutions would attract problems - if you have the ability to sneak really well, you want to use that to solve problems, so the GM could give you more opportunities to sneak. So if you have invested in the power to cure any ailment suddenly a good deal of NPCs start having such problems the character can fix. It doesn't have to be a wave of magical cancer everywhere, but old scars, small persistent pains and aches, some family member struggling with a chronic condition, etc. Suddenly you have social leverage to use on people (even if you act selflessly, never turn anyone away and don't ask for payment not to be an asshole that prays on people, they can still feel in your debt). Of course sometimes it might be harder to figure out how to work such Cancer Curing Powers into a game - there are only so many situations being able to train black belt martial arts master by the dozen could realistically solve without turning into some kind of wuxia action flick about making a dojo city to fight against another evil dojo army...

Conclusions

While people do want to play good and selfless characters (of course not in every game), making them spend their limited character resources away from things that would be useful regularly and into niche powers that make their characters really good, helpless and selfless people can give players a buyer's remorse. Some of it could be addressed by tailoring what appears in a session to give the players a chance to highlight the cool and expensive powers their character has, but that could feel a bit pandering if done too much.

In general, it might be better for games to be consciously designed with this problem in mind.

Different takes on religions, gods and player characters in RPGs

Recently I watched some Legend of Vox Machina and one of the big plots of the series was focused on a cleric losing her connection to her deity. With the show being rather trope-y, it went the usual route of the deity saying what amounted to "I haven't forsaken you, you have forsaken me" and so on. It felt like such a worn out story beat. Then I started going over the various relationships between religion, spirituality, gods, their chosen and their faithful I've seen in RPGs and the list started getting so long I figured I'd best start writing things down. So if you want an inspiration for a character, setting detail or the like, hope you enjoy!

Morally absolutist religions and lawful stupid

First category of religious interpretations that inform the characters would fall under "moral absolutism". They rely on religious commandments being applied as per letter of the law without question. This seems to be Gygax's interpretation of what "Lawful Good" means:

Sand Creek Massacre as a moral baseline,

kill those orc babies because they are an evil race

With the religious commandments being absolute and unwavering, the role of a cleric or a paladin is to execute them on the behalf of their deity without question. Essentially, they become an extension of their god of choice.

In terms of playing a character like that it tends to veer towards the Lawful Stupid category. The player is discouraged from making their own decision, instead applying the religious law like a blunt instrument. Worse yet is when the GM punishes a player for not playing their paladin according to their interpretation of the religion and takes away their powers for being "bad".

From a narrative perspective, characters like these are rather limiting in a game. If they always act in a certain way with no nuance, the GM basically knows what they will do in any situation they are put and you are not really playing a character as following a script.

5:08 - Lawful Stupid Clop Cop

Absolute decrees, flexible interpretations - Tyranny

A different approach to absolutist religions would be those presented in Tyranny. In that game you are an archon of a tyrannical god-like entity Kyros the Overlord. They send down Edicts for what they will to happen, and yours is the ability to bend them. If Kyros curses a land to burn as long as forbidden knowledge lies in a citadel you can fulfil it by moving the books elsewhere, which fulfils the letter but not the spirit of the Edict.

Noah Caldwell-Gervais' video essay on the game as a whole

This interpretation of religion might be a bit hard to pull off in a casual pen and paper RPG campaign. You would probably have to have characters that in some way are forced to obey a given religion, but at the same time struggle against it for what they believe to be the morally correct outcome. Similarly, the deity sending down the decrees would have to be powerful enough to force the players to act on their behalf, while also accepting players interpretations of its decrees as valid (which could be due to not caring, or being a rules lawyer, or maybe following some alien logic of "I commanded it, it happened, therefore the way it happened must've been the way I commanded it" (sounds like something Malfeas would do honestly) or something).

I think the closest thing to this I've seen in an RPG would be Sidereals from Exalted. They are the troubleshooters of Fate. They go in when something that shouldn't have happened happened and their job is to set history right. However, while Fate might chafe against it, they can exert their will as to some things. Maybe they don't want to kill a child that should've died in a flood and instead decide to Lone Wolf and Cub it.

High autonomy and task delegation - The Immaculate Order

If you want to avoid the pitfalls of Lawful Stupid, you could have a religion that gives its priests a high degree of autonomy while delegating tasks to them. In this scenario a deity or even a religious order could send a cleric or a paladin on a quest or to a specific location and trust they will take care of any problem they will encounter. The PC then is responsible for acting on the behalf of their religion to the best of their ability while still having the autonomy to make their own decisions and interpret the rules and orders as needed.

A good example of this would be Exalted's Immaculate Order, a state religion that focuses on being the intermediary between the myriad gods of the setting and the people, as well as hunting ancient monsters that stalk the land. The Immaculate Monks are send on their missions and expected to get things done, but there isn't much beyond a mortal oversight on them. Their power is their own and nothing will curse them for letting something slide or getting corrupt since first of all, religion in Exalted doesn't work that way, and second of all, the Immaculate Order is a manufactured religion that is used to keep the world behaving in a certain way according to some people in power.

Exalted and "no backsies" on power

Since I already touched on it, might as well expand it here. In the world of Exalted by default you play a demigod hero that is empowered by the gods or the elements. You could be the priest of the god that gave you power, or just someone that was awesome enough to impress them, but at the end of the day, you are marked by their power. You're not a paladin or a cleric per-se, mainly by the dint of this being an eastern fantasy.

At the same time, just because a god gave you some of their power doesn't mean they hold any sway over you. An exaltation is a one and done type of deal, the god can't take away your power or stop you from getting more powerful after they have given you the spark (without killing you of course, but considering you were designed to be a titan-killer, few are stupid enough to try).

This essentially means that a god choosing you as their champion puts a lot of faith in you to be a good long-term investment, and similar to the previous section, you are afforded a lot of autonomy in representing them.

Taboos and caveats of power

Adjacent to the default Exalted's "no backsies" on power are divine or supernatural powers that come with some taboos and caveats. You are still not beholden to a deity to use your divine magic, but you have something else that is limiting you and your behaviour.

This covers your 5e D&D paladins that have to upkeep their Oaths or risk becoming Oathbreakers. They could, say, be questing for glory and have to perform great deeds and avoid cowardice. These pain the character in broad enough strokes that you don't fall into the "lawful stupid" category of the older edition paladins while still directing the character to working in a certain way.

In Fading Suns you have religious priests of The Universal Church of the Celestial Sun that wield power in the setting, both literal and figurative. They tend to the peasant folk to keep them on the right path, they act as advisers and confessors to the nobility, and if needed be, they take flamethrowers to burn the heretics...

A good heretic is a burnt heretic, thanks Avesti

They can also manifest Theurgy, a magic that comes with a small caveat - Hubris. If you do bad things, like murder, steal, or get excommunicated that Hubris will grow until your character becomes a sinful plague on the land.

Some type of Exalts in Exalted have similar taboos. For example, the Abyssals are champions of the dead and are forbidden from taking on a name, acknowledging who they were in the past life, or even creating or saving lives. It doesn't mean they are physically incapable of doing those things, but usually there is a high price to pay associated with those transgressions.

These kind of mechanics work well for when you want to give player characters power they can use for good or ill, while at the same time putting some thematic or gameplay restrictions on what to use them for. As long as they are not too restrictive, they will keep the players in check without ruining the fun. While this limits some murderhobo behaviour in some bad gamers, for a high-level play this could also limit some stories you could tell, ones of unchecked power corrupting people and so on (hello again Exalted).

Religion of shared interests - Sathraism, SWN's Psychics

A different way of expressing religion is through how the practitioners share common interests unique to that religion. An example of this are the members of a minor heretical sect from Fading Suns called the Sathraists.

Fading Suns is a scifi fantasy game where people travel between worlds through stargates floating in space. There is one quirk to that - when you jump, for a moment you become one with the universe in an addictive flash of nirvana. This is what caused psychic powers to get introduced to the human race. However, since people started getting addicted to those jumps, soon Sathra Dampers were developed that shielded the people in the ship from the psychodelic effects and made space travel more mundane.

This didn't stop people chasing the high though and figuring out how to get their next fix by meddling with the ship engines. Eventually, you had a minor religious heretical cult develop around this phenomena of people that help protect one another, help score their next hit and look out for anyone new that might have experienced the phenomenon themselves. The religion comes from the shared experience, needs and interests to support its practitioners.

Stargate, but more extra

A similar phenomena can also be seen in Stars Without Number. It too is a scifi fantasy game that has psychics. One quirk about them though - a new psychic will most likely burn themselves out pretty quickly and become everyone's problem if they don't have a mentor to teach them how to use their powers. They need someone with a specific psionic power to help them get over their initial hump before they learn how to control their powers and so on.

While the setting is a mostly blank and open ended sandbox, you could infer someone would start a psychic order religion that seeks out new psychics and trains them in how to properly use their power as well as teaching them a religion based on those powers. Again, a religion based on shared experience, needs and interests of the practitioners.

Power through conviction - oWoD's True Faith

White Wolf offered us another take on religion with Old World of Darkness' True Faith merit. It was a bit of a weird power that had different interpretations throughout the various game lines and editions. It mostly boiled down to this - if you believed in religion strong enough, you could perform some miracles or generally use it to smite creatures of darkness.

In one of the scenarios of the Gehenna book however, we can infer that True Faith is not tied to doing religiously good deeds or even the approval of Yahweh (oWoD had a very judeo-christian focused backstory, down to Vampires descending from Caine).

In the Wormwood scenario, a group of Vampires hide in a church and await god's judgement after he destroys all of the world's vampires in 40 days and 40 nights. One of those vampires in question is Ferox, a Gargoyle bruiser with True Faith 9 (out of possible 10). He's mostly there to keep peace and is not above hurting or killing people to do his job. He's a zealot through and through.

Too cool for school Ferox

At the end of the scenario, all of the characters are judged by Yahweh directly and can either be purged of their Mark of Cain and become people, or get smitten into dust. Ferox falls into that second camp, probably to the surprise of similar murderhobos that might've been playing oWoD in the 2000s with a similar build and attitude.

It is certainly an interesting take on religions in RPGs, although it might come off as flat in execution. You can't really judge if a player character has enough conviction to continue using their powers, and possibly confronting their conviction in their righteousness with actual religious morality or the will of a deity would have to be a big event that amounts to "you're playing your character wrong, stupid". So there probably is a reason why this kind of powers didn't make the transition to Chronicles of Darkness.

Power through self-improvement - Monks, Elemental Dragons

To contrast with gaining power through religiously-motivated self-conviction, there is a similar concept of gaining power through self-improvement - spiritual purity and all that. D&D's Monks are an example of that - they are a class focused on mastering oneself and using spiritual energy that is divorced from a specific deity. Of course you have spiritual teachings and similar training how to achieve said mastery, so it would tie to a religion or several. Most importantly though, Monks as written can't lose the power they gain, and they are not beholden to some cosmic force, which sets them apart from a number of similar entities like say, the Jedi Order (that on paper at least follow "the will of the Force" and can turn to the dark side).

We see a similar concept to that in Exalted, not only in the form of various heroic mortals with their martial training, or Sorcerers that can achieve great feats without being Exalts, but also in the way how Elementals work. They start off as rather mindless manifestations of the elemental forces that eventually can develop sentience and personhood. Then through spiritual enlightenment they can reach further levels of essence refinement, turning into Lesser Elemental Dragons. If they continue, they can even turn to something comparable to the most powerful beings in the setting - Greater Elemental Dragons that stretch for hundreds of miles and can devastate continents. This happened at least once, and now that Elemental is buried beneath a mountain range, while others are discouraged from becoming that enlightened...

Sometimes you can have religion and spirituality without the need to worship a specific deity, all the while earning some cool powers.

Appeasing your powerdaddy and quid pro quo powers - Warlocks

A different take on the power balance between a deity and their practitioner could come from the relationship a D&D Warlock has with their patron. A common interpretation of this class is that the patron can't take away the power they granted the Warlock, but at the same time if the Warlock wants more power they need to earn them by appeasing their patron. This does give them a good amount of leeway for some back and forth as needed, while still preserving an interesting power dynamic.

I'm not telling you to do something, but... - EvWoD Infernals

This one is a little bit particular. In Exalted vs World of Darkness you have Infernal characters. They wield the power of hells themselves. Their power sets revolve around destruction and bringing about the end of the world so they could rule the reforged world. That being said, unlike their original counterparts from Exalted, there is nothing controlling them. Once they get their power, it is theirs to keep, use and abuse.

What keeps this category different from "no backsies" however, is that the powers themselves shape how the characters act. But when you have the power to turn water into acid, irradiate the landscape, create zombies and graft hellish implants onto people while turning them into fomori, it kind of informs which direction the character will fall towards.

These kind of powers use the carrot rather than the stick approach to moulding the chosen of a given deity: "You don't have to be a cruel tyrant, but if you want to it is so easy". It can only be achieved by very deliberate game design, focusing not only what the powers can do, but what intentionally they cannot do and what kind of character is painted by this positive and negative space.

Deities as avatars of cultures - Godbound's Made Gods

A completely different approach to religion is presented in Godbound in the form of Made Gods. As the lore goes, humanity achieved post-scarcity utopia, solved all science and all that stuff. The last thing they needed to iron out was philosophy and figuring out who was right. Because they couldn't agree on an answer, they turned to the only person that could settle their dispute - the abrahamic god figure of their world, the Creator. They stormed the gates of heaven, broke into its throne room only to find its throne empty. So they thought to themselves - if the Creator is not here to settle their dispute, they will have to wage a final war to prove who is right. So they stripped heaven and reality itself for parts to build great artefacts of power and Made Gods - avatars of their philosophy and civilisations, the most powerful engines of war imagined.

The role of those deities in Godbound is to represent their cultures and wage war on anyone who did not conform to their rigid beliefs. They did require an army of priests and theotechnicians to upkeep, but they did offer their believers a tangible afterlife in a heaven made by that Made God. It was a much better alternative to the hell where everyone else would go to that was hijached by angels out of spite for humanity breaking reality and shattering the world.

Making your own gods - Kuo-toa and YES!

On a similar note but perhaps a smaller scale, sometimes you can create your own gods on a much more personal level.

One example of that from D&D comes in the form of Kuo-toa, an amphibian race that can invent their own deities for protection. While those wouldn't be nearly as powerful as more established Forgotten Realms pantheons, it's certainly interesting.

Something similar also happened during Dimension 20's Fantasy High series. During the game, Kristen Applebees, a cleric, started having doubts about her faith when she realised she was brought up in an extremist cult, and after meeting her deity face to face realised he was basically a frat boy douche. Eventually, she started a new religion, complete with a new god of YES!. A nice capstone to her arc.

Create your god, kind of like this...

Serve the people, embody the ideals - Alchemicals

Going back to Exalted, we have yet another different expression of religion and its relationship to people in the form of Alchemicals and Autochthonians in general. In the setting you have a titan named Autochthon, basically Hephaestus mixed with Primus. One day he decided to peace out, turn his body inside out and create a world out of it called Autochthonia. He raptured a bunch of people to populate this world before disappearing from the main part of the setting.

You are being raptured, stop resisting!

One things settled he gave the people a new religion to follow so they would maintain his body while he slumbered. At the same time, he taught the people how to turn the most devout and accomplished among them into heroes called Alchemicals (basically a cross between a human, golem, transformer and RoboCop, but at the same time a communist hero of the people). They needed those heroes to take care of them and so they would grow over time to become new cities (think Metroplex). It makes a bit more sense in context...

Some Alchemicals are bigger than others...

So here you have a religion with a lot of back and forth. Autochthon needs people to maintain his body and provide him prayers to sustain him. People need Autochthon to provide them with raw resources to sustain themselves and Alchemicals to protect them from the raw elements and other big nasties that lurk in the robotic world. Alchemicals need the people to help maintain themselves (especially when they grow to city size and become immobile). All of this is wrapped in a religion that promotes the good of the community, selflessness, hard work, communism, and duty to Autochthon.

It's a rather rare take on religion, where your god needs you to survive, and you also are expected to serve your community above yourself, being an actual hero of the people.

Polytheistic priests

A large view of clerics, paladins and people of faith in general in RPGs come from a western perspective. You pray to and have relationship with one god, you follow one faith that has a strict set of tenants and so on. But that doesn't need to be the case. Your game could have a pantheon of deities (like Humblewood), or go all out and give everything a god to manage it (like Exalted). So what then are the roles of people of faith?

While you could have some clerics dedicated to worshipping one deity in particular (like Brides of Ahlat in Exalted), you'd more likely have the priests be focused on serving multiple deities. Whether that's through worship, guiding people ("if you have troubles with your fields, this is how you pray to Henwin"), as well as being the intermediaries between the people and the gods.

That last one especially is the focus of the aforementioned Immaculate Order. That set of beliefs postulates that the gods should not interfere with mortals and the Immaculate Monks are the ones that resolve disputes between gods and people. So if a river god cries too much and floods a town, you know who to ask for help.

Now if the setting has gods that form a somewhat cohesive pantheon or can generally co-exist (like Humblewood when you look at it - the deities there form a somewhat cohesive whole and even Kren, the evil fox deity is not a completely evil being) you can have priests representing a lot of gods without an issue. The problem arises when they start becoming incompatible with one another.

In Exalted for example, you have gods and Exalts that are worshipped by mortals on regular basis. The same world also houses Yozis, ancient mad titans that spite the world for being defeated eons ago, and the Neverborn, fossilised dead titans that wish for the whole world to end. Each of those have their own kind of devotees (mortals, demons, nihilistic ghosts) that mostly don't see eye to eye.

So while you could still have priests that represent and handle multiple deities, chances are they wouldn't represent everyone.

Conclusion

While there are probably many more different relationships between religion, spirituality, gods, their chosen and their faithful, I think this should be a good enough start for players or game designers to get some inspiration for their next creations. 

Related articles:

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RPG Blender - an Exalted Podcast review (up to Episode 56)

I’ve spent the last few years listening through a few of the Exalted RPG Podcasts / Actual Plays and I figured I’d share my thoughts on them with you. There is a good deal one can learn from them, whether you’re making your own actual plays or just gaming in general.

In today's episode, I will cover RPG Blender’s unnamed Exalted 3E campaign (one shot, plus Season 1 Episodes 1-56).

1) Disclaimers

There are a few important disclaimers to get out of the way before we start.

First of all, I understand this was a fan project and should be judged accordingly. I am thankful for the effort the cast has put into entertaining us with their stories, but there will be some criticism of the podcast present.

Secondly, any criticism made against the characters portrayed or how the game played out should not be held as criticism or insults of the game master or the players. Not everyone is perfect and sometimes something doesn’t work out or falls flat in execution. It’s important to keep the art separate from the artist and focus on the former without being disrespectful to the latter.

Thirdly, since I’m also a part of an RPG Actual Play Podcast that features Exalted games, I might be biased towards one interpretation and way of handling things in Exalted that might not agree with how others view and play the game, that’s to be expected. That and some might see criticising other podcasts a conflict of interest or something, so here is your disclaimer.

Finally, there will be some spoilers for the show, it would be rather hard to discuss some things without that...

2) Overview and minor things

This Exalted campaign is hosted by George (Twitter) and is part of the RPGBlender podcast. This game started as a one-shot session as a part of their Grab Bag Gaming “let’s try a system and see how it shakes out” type of game, but has since grown into a full-blown campaign. It's a game recorded over a voice call that’s later been cut down into 1 hour sessions and uploaded to YouTube.

The game follows a handful of mortal heroes that Exalt, explore their cool new powers and get roped into political machinations a bit beyond their grasp.

Episode synopsis

3) Player Characters

The campaign features a mostly fixed cast of player characters that go from mortal to Exalted:

Smiling Mountain, aka Mnemon Rakin (m) - a Dawn Caste giant strong punchman that believes in the rule of the strong.

Dirum Borath, aka Cathak Lau (m) - a Twilight Caste archaeologist and artifice enthusiast.

Strings Like Fingers (m) - an Eclipse Caste flamboyant crazy horse girl man that loves his amazing horse, Invincible 2.

Adramalihk, aka Cynis Niddala (m) - a Day Caste Abyssal, a down-on-his-luck dynast that wants to return his family to the glory they deserve. Has a monkey named Uba and a cult of devoted followers.

4) General Plot

So far, there are basically four stories in this campaign so far.

Firstly, there is the one-shot campaign where Mountain and Dirum as mortals go out to Darthask to investigate an Anathema sighting as a part of a Wyld Hunt.

The second story is the Daughter of Nexus module where the group tries saving a daughter of the god of Nexus from being used for nefarious purposes.

The third story is the players investigating a mysterious treasure island that has called out to them in a dream, from the Tomb of Dreams module.

The forth and ongoing story is the group’s adventures on the way back from that island where they decided to have a quick stop in the city of Nechara and got roped into a large conflict between the city and the Broken Horn Tribe hoping to conquer it.

5) Highlights

5.1) Group’s First Exalted Experience

From everything that’s been stated, this is the group’s first Exalted experience. They try the system for the first time during their one-shot, and then continue the campaign afterwards. It is interesting to watch those players get over their D&D brain and slowly embrace the higher-power game while being wide-eyed newcomers to the world.

Sure, this might not be what some Exalted fans might be looking for in their actual play, but viewed through the lens of what the group is trying to accomplish, it’s a solid exploration of the system.

5.2) Biased introduction to the world

One thing you can’t really do with players that have read a lot of Exalted is to introduce them to a world in a biased way, which the GM did pretty solidly at the start. George told them the tale of holy tyrants that oppressed the world that had to be struck down by heroes rising up, and how that brought about the freedom of the world. Except this wasn’t the story of the Primordial War, but of the Usurpation. The players, as a Wyld Hunt retinue, are primed to hate the Solars… until they become them. It is an interesting take on the dynamic of the world you don’t often get in games like this that is made possible by the players not knowing the world too much before jumping in.

5.3) Some good characters and drama

A large part of a successful Actual Play comes from the characters involved and their dynamics with one another, and RPG Blender does deliver on that a bit. You don’t have any Godwins or Mocking White Winds (characters that winge or are too paranoid), and any inter-character drama is first discussed OOG from what I’ve been told, so that’s the baseline.

Strings Like Fingers was a nice, colourful character. He had the most wuxia design of the whole group (long robes, long fingernails, a meter-long pipe, etc.) and seemed to be the character most comfortable with how the Exalted setting operates (once he gets over his D&Disms from the first episode). Him being really infatuated with his horse, Invincible 2, was also very amusing. It was unfortunate that the party would often find themselves in places where that horse couldn’t go. The party dynamic felt a bit off ever since this character left the show.

Adramalihk seems to be stealing the show though in his own way. His weasely mannerisms come off quite well, and they are well suited for a Day Caste. His player can also deliver on his complex backstory - being a member of house Cynis that is uncomfortable with what his family and he has done in the past, having to live with the indignity of being impoverished, being driven to reclaim his just deserved place in society, and being a leader of a cult-commune that has built itself around him. Every now and then you get into his emotional core and the player can deliver.

Dirum and Mountain are not bad characters, but they seem to fall under “mostly okay”. I’ll talk about them later.

5.4) Flashback combat tutorial!

Since the one-shot the group ran was the players’ first introduction to Exalted, the GM decided to teach them how the system’s combat works by the means of a flashback tutorial bout with their teacher. It was an amusing scene, being about as self-aware as a video game tutorial, but got the job done. It was a neat trick on the GM’s part.

5.5) Playing pre-written modules

While watching the earlier episodes of the campaign, some things were a bit weird. Some of the plot points were a bit weird - multiple factions wanted to use the daughter of the city god of Nexus to turn the city into a shadowland or a wyld pocket somehow. Then things clicked more when it was pointed out the group’s first adventure after the one-shot was a pre-written module - the Daughter of Nexus. The next adventure was also a module - the Tomb of Dreams.

On one hand it’s interesting to see some of Exalted’s pre-written scenarios be played, but on the other hand, it doesn’t seem those scenarios were that great to begin with. It would be interesting to see if some other modules make their way into the series, it would certainly be unique among the Exalted Actual Plays I’ve seen so far.

5.6) Social combat

In Episodes 35 and 36 the group had an unusual conflict - a full blown social combat. The circle decided to appeal to the council of Nechara to get a peaceful resolution of their conflict with the Broken Horn Tribe. The GM ran it as a quasi-combat where the circle had to figure out and convince enough of the councilmembers to get the vote to go in their favour. In the second episode they were also pitted against some Dragonblooded to up the stakes.

The players said the conflict was more stressful than the actual combats they were in and it did feel a bit tense and high stakes listening to it, especially given that the circle couldn’t let their anima flare during this conversation. It was definitely a fun situation to listen to.

5.7) Abyssal Resonance

I’m always a sucker for seeing how people play into Exalted’s Limit system, and it seems we might be getting something brewing here. While between the three Solars we had about one Limit roll, our resident Abyssal Adramalihk has done quite a few transgressions against Oblivion (mostly because I’m guessing they weren’t laid out to him from the start, instead he’s learning them as the episodes go on). It will definitely be interesting to see how far that will get pushed and what will be the implications of it. Now if we could get the Solars to do a temper tantrum spiral…

5.8) Animal antics

The series’ running joke is the players realising they can make their GM do animal noises by taking an animal Familiar and having fun with it. You get your regular dose of monkey noises out of it.

5.9) Interesting enough cult

Character cults in demigod games can be a hit or miss affair. Usually the NPCs in them tend to be really flat, existing only as a hivemind that just sings their patron’s praises. While we do get that to an extent, there is a little bit of extra depth on display here.

Adramalihk is a person with a personal grudge compensating for his family’s impoverished status. His cult is his second family, one that he takes care of and nurtures, and they in turn work themselves to the bone out of devotion to him. The relationship has a little bit of give and take from both sides. It’s not much, but it feels a little bit less bad than some other cults I’ve seen.

Unfortunately, we also have a bit of moralising from Dirum about how cults are bad that takes up a good deal of screen time repeatedly. It also doesn’t seem to be going anywhere beyond people giving Adramalihk flak for taking that Merit, which is a bit unfortunate. But on the plus side, apparently the players did check in with one another before they started arguing in-character, so that’s good to know! Would be nice if the arguments actually went anywhere other than just lingering pretty much unresolved for the characters though…

5.10) Consent before arguing

Exalted and similar demigod games tend to make people argue with one another a lot about morality and other things, and those moments in an Actual Play can be uncomfortable if you think the players are actually yelling at one another. It was a big thing in Swallows of the South, Princes of the Universe, and in A Pair of Dice Lost’s Exalted campaign (the one they did a recap of).

I was a bit anxious when I heard Dirum’s player start raising his voice while arguing with Adramalihk about his cult, but as mentioned above - from what I heard the players did check in with one another before that argument happened, so good on them! It would be nice for that to be a part of the recorded episode, but it’s at least good to know it’s not an afterthought for the crew.

6) Criticism

No show is without its flaws, and so we should turn to what RPG Blender has committed. Not as an attack on the show or its creators, but as a learning experience on how everyone could improve...

6.1) Straddling the line between D&D and Exalted

One downside of the group being new to Exalted but not new to RPGs is that they do bring some baggage, assumptions and incorrect style of play into the game. The series teeters on the edge between being Exalted and “D&D but in a different system”. Sometimes you are dealing with demons being trapped in a dream and used as a safe to store ancient artefacts, while other times you are watching a rogue sneak into a building and look for loot to steal.

The worst example of this is understandably pretty early, in Season 1 Episode 1 where characters get a rescue quest to go into a sewer, haggle for an advancement, fret about buying the correct supplies and so on. This being the first episode this is understandable, although this kind of “adventurer” attitude appears every now and then. A large chunk of S1E26 is spent fretting about having to change clothes to remain incognito, snubbing some proposed clothes since they were woven by a cult, exploring a clothes store in bumpkinville and so on.

If you expect epic heroic fantasy all the time, you will be disappointed.

6.2) Only the GM reads the lore

While it’s all well and good for the players to go into a system blind, that novelty can only last so long. Eventually, it gets a little grating that the players don’t seem to know some basic stuff about the world, especially when they are supposed to be educated dynasts from the Realm. Meanwhile you have someone 50 sessions in talking about “The Empire” (The Realm), “The Holy Order” (The Immaculate Order), “the Ascended” (The Exalted) and “Elementalists” (The Dragonblooded) and it’s getting a bit old.

Similarly, one of the players decided a running gag with them is that they can guess peoples’ names on a random chance. But rather than using some list of eastern-inspired names, or getting poetic with wuxia names, the player tends to guess some modern western names more often than not which doesn’t add to the immersive feeling of the game. A Stephanie and a Samantha don’t belong in Exalted…

The GM seems to be well enough read in the setting, so that stops it from being a complete write-off. But if you want to compensate for your players not reading the book, you really need someone steeped in the setting. Swallows of the South had a similar issue to an extent, but Quinn painted such a vivid world you got nicely immersed in it, and the players did pick up what he was putting down.

A big appeal of Exalted is its world and lore. It’s the reason why you make characters tied to The Realm and its Great Houses, why you go to Nexus and deal with the Emissary to avoid a Wyld Hunt. All of those things have a narrative meaning behind them you can draw on, rather than making up your own empire, city, people, etc. in the vast swathes of uncharted Creation.

6.3) The world is empty

In comparison to a few other Exalted Actual Plays, the world presented by RPG Blender feels rather empty. It is a bit telling when some of the most developed NPCs of the game are a pet monkey and a horse.

The series didn’t introduce too many deep NPCs, and a few that were introduced are mostly tied to their respective areas. Of ones that appeared in more than one episode, you had Useless Sparrow and Pluton of the Endless Stream in the one-show, two guild hierarchs, the Emissary and Avia in Nexus, three spirits during their dream adventure, and in Nechara you had Captain Njalan, Lore Of Autumn, Cynis Lanawle, Nanik, a bartender, and an angry undead. On top of that you have about two or three recurring members of Adramalihk’s cult, Uba the monkey and Invincible 2 and that’s about every NPC that’s worth remarking about that has appeared in the series. This isn’t much, especially given how some of those NPCs are “silo’d” in their part of the world and understandably you can’t interact with them if you are elsewhere. So having like half a dozen NPCs for a whole city where you spend 20+ hours is a bit sparse…

Funny enough though, the one-shot episodes were filled with a neat cast of colourful characters, but they mostly appeared in flashbacks to set things up for the players.

We seem to be slowly getting more interesting characters in the latter part of the series when the group is not going back and forth between their boat, the forest, investigating some empty buildings or talking with a literal masked and undistinguishable council of seven people. Captain Njalan is growing a personality, we have an interesting villain show up, Lore of Autumn is not a one note antagonist Lunar, etc. Cynis Lanawle especially had an interesting potential - she is a member of a Sworn Brotherhood that’s bringing a Wyld Hunt into Nechara to investigate some Anathema sightings and so on. Her first interaction with the Circle was through a heated debate in front of the ruling council, which was an interesting conflict that let the players learn a good deal about her. So things are looking up, but might be a while before we get Swallow’s Aria or Seven Symphonious Cords.

6.4) Time passing day by day

This campaign makes keeping track of time an important part of the game (for training times as well as with some ticking clocks), but also likes to drag some of that time day-by-day, character-by-character. This was especially painful in S01E13 where you spent an hour on something that could’ve been montaged to 10-15 minutes - one character was doing research, one was helping them with said research, another character was tailing an NPC for no payoff, and the last person was stealing some supplies. But since one of them was involved in a difficult Extended Roll he could only do once a day, we got to hear a week’s worth of what everyone was up to, two time slots a day. Makes me wish for Fellowship’s A Little Downtime…

6.5) Playing overcautiously and the Solar problem

While cautiously might be the way a lot of people play RPGs, it can get a little old in an Actual Play. Part of it is a setting problem, part of it is a player problem.

As with most Exalted Solar Actual Plays, our protagonists go out of their way to keep their powers on the down low in the fear of party popper Wyld Hunt showing up on your doorstep. We’ve seen it in ExalTwitch and in Swallows of the South, and it’s a bit same-y by now. But can’t blame RPG Blender for playing the game the way it kind of wants you to play it, even if we’ve seen it before elsewhere. However, this isn’t the only way the game is overly cautious.

The group came to Nechara in Episode 22. They wanted to have “a quick beach episode” here. But players being players messed with some things and ended up getting roped in as the local Anathema specialists and diplomats trying to solve an old feud between the city and a local tribe that has been trying to raid it for some information. Rather than picking a side they have been very cautious in committing to anything, instead going back and forth between the two sides and negotiating a peaceful solution. This isn’t helped by the fact that a Wyld Hunt has showed up in the city AND the fact that the tribe is being helped by a few Lunars working for a Lunar kingdom of Mahalanka that wants to conquer the city, forcefully relocate the inhabitants and use it as a staging ground for fighting against the Realm. But you know, let’s try appeasing both sides here and see how that works out! ;)

The whole peaceful resolution option seems to be only pushed by the players really wanting to avoid bloodshed while not having much in the ways of negotiating skills or goodwill from the Lunars to avoid the war. It’s mostly wishful thinking bordering on delusion to make it work, and it’s a bit frustrating to watch the players just keep chugging along in that direction rather than resolve the issue faster or more directly by playing it too safe.

6.6) Wobbly character dynamics

A big appeal in a lot of Actual Plays are the characters and how they interact with one another. Unfortunately, it doesn’t feel the group dynamics are entirely there in this adventure, at least not since Strings left.

Mountain and Dirum form your foundation. They are war buddies that will be together through thick and thin. Sometimes that dynamic does feel like it’s veering towards Godwin and Ajax territory (characters that were introduced first are buddy buddy with one another and when a new character joins they are “the outsider” and not treated) with Mountain having Dirum’s back on more than one occasion, but it’s not egregious.

Mountain is a character that believes the strong should rule, and that tends to come up every now and then when he flexes on other characters in situations you sometimes don’t expect, like when he withheld possibly dangerous artefacts from the group by putting it under something only he could lift to assert his strength-based dominance.

Dirum fills the leader role in the group, at least as far as directing Mountain and trying to negotiate with various NPC parties. Unfortunately, sometimes he has problems being the party’s face, which was more comfortably filled by Strings when he was still there. His base character concept (an Indiana Jones style character that’s really into Artefacts) also doesn’t come up very often since the player doesn’t seem to pursue many of his goals actively all that much (sure, he does a lot of leg work with book research to advance the plot twice, but that feels more reactionary).

Adramalihk feels like the odd character out in the group, which is a shame. He’s a Day Caste, so you expect some degree of sneaking out on his own and doing things independently, and he does shine there. The problem is that he’s kind of in a similar space as Dirum otherwise - he kind of plays a face but without a strong preference for it, and he could be a leader if Mountain and Dirum would follow, but those two prefer their own dynamics.

So overall, it feels the group is lacking some key dynamics you’d want in a group. You want someone that at least knows a bit about the setting to quickly pick up what the GM is putting down and maybe push the plot forward with some decisive actions. Give this group a Killer Queen or a Royal and they could sing.

6.7) Is this an ambush? Fishing for dice

Exalted is a Storyteller system, so it comes with the usual mechanics you’d expect from the system, including skill specialties. While most of them are okay enough, one of the players picked a specialty that for me has become a bit grating over time - an Awareness specialty of "Ambushes".

So whenever something unexpected happens and the players are told to roll for Awareness, the inevitable question comes up - “is this an ambush?”. This gets especially repetitive since Awareness is also used for Join Battle roll, meaning every combat also opens up with this question.

This wouldn’t be too bad if it wasn’t for the fact that that player likes to haggle with the GM for dice. Sure, it’s done in a playful way, but it gets old sooner than later.

You similarly get more and more haggling for stunts, assists, using one roll instead of another and so on as the players learn the system. Part of it is understandably due to how the Exalted system works - you describe your action for a Stunt, GM judges how many dice you get for that, and then you roll all of those dice. So it’s primed for players to fish for those bonus dice. But it gets a bit old when a player jokes that a small description should be some really big dice bonus, especially if they are not doing it for themselves but for someone else.

I get that the player just wants to be funny, but the system is a bit slow as is and haggling for dice on top of stunts on top of rolling 10+ dice and picking which charms to use starts to add to the tedium rather than excitement.

6.8) Audio quality

While most of the time the audio quality from the group is pretty good, things do dip down every now and then. A player or two have the tendency to go loud and over-saturate the recording, sometimes a lower quality headset microphone is used, etc. The show also seems to be using an automated piece of software to cut out all the dead air in recordings, but at times it gets a bit too eager and starts clipping into the start of sentences which also makes it a little bit less comfortable to listen to. But generally, it’s pretty serviceable.

7) Conclusions

Overall, RPG Blender’s Exalted campaign is fine enough. I wish I could praise it more, but there isn’t that much I could say about it even after watching through it twice. It’s not the most captivating game, but it’s got competent production value. The characters have some potential, but too often they are spinning their wheels. It’s fine enough as a first foray into Exalted, but after 50 episodes I would expect a little bit more to come out of it.

The game is teetering between being an Exalted-level heroic fantasy, and dipping down to the characters being D&D-level adventurers. It isn’t a good place for it to sit though, since people that come in expecting an Exalted game would be put off. It does take a bit of a perspective shift to get into the correct head space for the players though, so it can be challenging.

The show would probably benefit from having a fourth member to improve the group dynamics. Ideally we’d have Strings back, but understandably that might not be possible. Beyond that, we need the world to be a bit more fleshed out - have a few more strong, well-defined NPCs for players to interact with. Finally, we need the players to start taking some more decisive actions. Commit to one side of the conflict and go with it rather than trying to appease everyone.

With all that being said, I think the show is starting to improve in the more recent episode. After a while the group has met a number of important NPCs in Nechara, they have had their run-in with a colourful Wyld Hunt gang and we might be heading towards some climax of the current conflict. It seems the crew also had a talk about embracing the more heroic nature of Exalted and jumping into action more readily, as apparent by Episode 56. So I’m cautiously hopeful that the show will get better sooner than later.

I plan on revisiting this review once the campaign is officially over, which might not be for a while it seems - the GM has hinted on a possibly lengthy meta-plot the characters might be facing.

Play with a purpose - filler content in streams and actual plays, looking at RPG Blender

Recently I've been watching some RPG Blender actual play of Exalted 3E and I've noticed something about a few episodes or scenes - there was basically little of note happening in them! You could summarise entire scenes or hour long episodes down in a sentence or two and not lose much. As someone that is also a part of an actual play group I think there is something to be learned here.

It's time to talk about optimising air time!

Disclaimers

There are a few important disclaimers to get out of the way before we start.

First of all, I understand this was a fan project and should be judged accordingly. I am thankful for the effort the cast has put into entertaining us with their stories, but there will be some criticism of the podcast present.

Secondly, any criticism made against the characters portrayed or how the game played out should not be held as criticism or insults of the game master or the players. Not everyone is perfect and sometimes something doesn’t work out or falls flat in execution. It’s important to keep the art separate from the artist and focus on the former without being disrespectful to the latter.

Thirdly, since I’m also a part of an RPG Actual Play Podcast that features Exalted games, I might be biased towards one interpretation and way of handling things in Exalted that might not agree with how others view and play the game, that’s to be expected. That and some might see criticising other podcasts a conflict of interest or something, so here is your disclaimer.

With that out of the way...

The offenders - idle chat, planning, combat and downtime

So here is an overview of the kind of situations I noticed are just "filler" in the episode, in a sense that you could cut them down or out without losing much of the story.

In Season 1 Episode 1 Welcome To Nexus the second half of the episode boils down to "buy supplies, go down a sewer pipe, dodge molten metal that barely does harm to you, find some tracks and follow them". This takes a good half an hour to get through. Sure, part of it is due to the group being new to the system (they only ever played a one-shot of the system, and Exalted 3E is a bit of a dense game), but the other part is everyone in the party interacting with the same tracks (looking at them, smelling them, tasting them) while mostly chatting idly and repeating what the GM told them.

In Season 1 Episode 11 Freedom For Arvia the second half of the episode consists almost entirely of the group planning what to do next, going over their options for where to turn in their quest basically.

Season 1 Episode 8, 9 and 10 are almost entirely made out of one extended fight.

In Season 1 Episode 13 Perchance to Dream the players describe how they spend a week of downtime, day after day, which boils down to "get paid, do a research in a library, talk about the dream they are having, steal some things, tail someone and do some training".

So let's go over the concepts one by one.

The idle chatter is a bit of a difficult one to avoid. You want your players to be talking to one another and engage with what is being presented, since that is a step up from players being rather passive and not filling the airtime. But on the other hand, if they are already good about creating enough content, you don't want everyone commenting on everything that's going on. If someone is focused on finding a trail, the spotlight is on them to lead the group to follow them. It's their time to shine and have the spotlight! Heck, Exalted 3E even incentivises you with a Role Bonus - you get XP for letting others have a spotlight and being cool according to their character concept:

Over-planning is one of those problems a number of more modern RPGs try to solve. It's a hard habit to break - players want to make optimal decisions and they want to anticipate problems that might arise, but that not only leads to overly-cautious play, but also a lot of air time devoted to chatting about the things you're going to do rather than doing them. Heck, in our Princes of the Universe game those things would even end in a deadlock because players couldn't agree on what to do, or didn't like what others wanted to do. It fostered an attitude of "just do what you want, since the group is more likely to forgive you after the fact since they won't care anymore than agree to let you do it in the first place"...

But at any rate, this kind of planning and deliberation not only takes a good deal of time in the game, it's also not that terribly engaging in comparison to the players actually doing something. It would be much more productive to develop some trust between the players and the GM and speed things along. Players shouldn't deliberate too much on what to do next, and the GM shouldn't punish them for acting without considering everything. Heck, it's more entertaining when not everything goes the way the players wanted and there is some obstacle to overcome, but those shouldn't be seen as a punishment but as a cool action scene you get to do.

Combat being slow is unfortunately the staple of Exalted 3E and many other systems, so it's kind of unavoidable. Heck, in one of our own episodes we spend like, 3 hours doing a fight that amounted to like one or two cool situations. There is a good deal of back and forth in Exalted combat, which is not helped by players being able to "stunt" their defence (cinematically describing how they counter an attack to get a boost to their defense). In a pre-recorded game, ideally you'd edit out a lot of the pauses, rolls, rules lookups and all that, but it can be a bit of a problem for streamed games.

Unfortunately, there isn't a great time saver to be had here unless you'd switch out what game you're using, which might not be the option for every group. Save that, maybe you could try optimising your game to speed things up a little. Maybe limiting the amount of combatants in a fight, maybe cutting down on some stunting (like, assume everyone gets a stunt so people don't have to describe how they parry a sword with their sword for the 20th time), etc.

Downtime, on the other hand, is something that can use a good deal of streamlining. Players should come into it with a purpose - what they want to accomplish. Based on that, everyone could get a scene where they do just that and focus on that being a cool moment, rather than switch between one player and the next every minute as they incrementally do what they set out to do. Give them some time slots. Heck, give the players a heads up that they will be doing a downtime and ask them to come up with interesting things they'd like to do ahead of the session so you'd come into this freeform time knowing what cool stuff will be going down!

Part of the downtime in RPG Blender that make it a little longer was also down to calling for some rolls that didn't need them. The big goal of that session was figuring out a vision the characters were having - where in the world is it located. That was accomplished by paying for a library access and two characters bunkering down to study it over the course of multiple rolls. The thing is, this was basically a start of a new quest for them, so from the narrative perspective, the players couldn't fail to find the location otherwise the entire quest couldn't begin. This makes it so strange why they were rolling to do the research, other than it taking up some time...

How other games streamline this

It's one thing to talk about some lofty theory on what to do and another to point out some systems that are already solving these issues. So let's talk about Fellowship!

Lesson one - supplies. In Fellowship you don't generally buy gear, your character comes with a gear list you pick from during character creation. The game knows you're an adventurer, so you have the basic supplies that don't matter for the story (something to sleep on, clothes, all that jazz). If you need a piece of gear to solve a problem (like a climbing rope, a ladder, some consumable tool, etc.) that's covered under Useful Gear:

So bam - no shopping is needed, if you want to come prepared make sure you have Useful items, no need to plan anything specific. Easy peasy, squeezed lemons.

Lesson two - working together. In Exalted, if multiple people are working together, first person rolls a check and the number of successes are added as dice to the next person's roll. Also, since this is Exalted, both of them will be stunting to describe how they are helping and so on and so on. That's like twice the amount of descriptions and rolls than you need. In Fellowship that's Bond That Bind Us:

People declare they are doing the same thing together, only one of them rolls, but adds an extra die to the roll and everything's easy. You don't have multiple people doing the same roll, but cooperation is still useful. Easy!

Lesson three - failing forward and investigation. Fellowship very much wants your game to progress, even if it is through failure. So when you are examining some clues or doing some research, you will always learn something, even if it backfires in some way. This ensures there is no gridlock in the game because the players roll badly and fail to get the clue they need to unlock the next step of the quest. This is done through Look Closely:

And of course, if you have other people helping you with the research, you use The Bonds That Bind Us so only one person rolls even if multiple people are contributing and so on. It's more efficient!

Lesson four - combat. In Fellowship, the combat isn't turn by turn, but more flowing. The spotlight is on you, you continue rolling until you fail and get into trouble, then the spotlight goes to someone else. If you're not saved from your consequences by the time the spotlight comes back to you, you have to deal with it yourself, usually by taking the hit. This basically means there will be less moving the combat beat by beat from player to player, but having more action scenes going down one after the other.

Lesson five - downtime. In Fellowship, this is a structured activity called A Little Downtime:

This covers doing research, training, having some other cool moments over the course of time passing and so on. It usually takes only minutes though, after which the group accomplishes what they need so they can get to their next objective. Sometimes to deal with a situation you have to "spend" enough scenes of the Downtime addressing the issue. It's still simple and efficient (and ties very neatly into a long rest, healing up, changing gear and how the BBEG progresses their evil plans, but that's a story for another time when we discuss Fellowship in more detail).

Conclusions

When you're creating an RPG stream or an actual play, you want to come into the game and every scene with a direction and a purpose. You want to entertain your audience and respect their time. Chatter for the sense of chatter shouldn't exist - you want to have scenes that further the plot, explore the characters, entertain, world build, etc.

And if you can pick games that streamline the game, or at least steal some good ideas from them to help you with your game, all the better ;).

Boundaries, genre conventions and breaking kayfabe in RPGs

Recently I ran into a post on reddit asking for advice on how to deal with a player having an emotional response and getting depressed over a death of an NPC they couldn't save. OP did want to remove them from the group not to ruin everyone else's fun, which a number of people chastised (and is one of the reasons I won't link it here). The whole situation did remind me of an idea we had in our podcasting group though about how to handle similar situations.

Draw boundaries

If you want to have a game where everyone is comfortable in playing, you ought to communicate both what you expect out of the game, as well as discussing boundaries. The latter is often overlooked since a lot of people just go off of what's been acceptable in their circle of friends and so on. A good deal of the time that's fine, but sometimes you do have to be more explicit since RPGs are prone to a lot more bleed than other games.

If you want to establish boundaries more explicitly, it might be handy to use #iHunt's Levels Worksheet:

Part of #iHunt's Level Worksheet, expanded edition from
Kissing Monsters in the Gig Economy

It will help you make sure everyone is comfortable with various topics, scenes and so on, and know what things to avoid not to make someone uncomfortable. If the game you wanted to play would feature those elements (say, the problematic "romance" present in Curse of Stradth or Bluebeard's Bride), it would be a good time to discuss them and consider altering those elements, or picking something else to play entirely.

Establish genre conventions

Talking about the boundaries is not only about what a person is comfortable with, but it's also a good time to discuss genre conventions. There is a world of difference between MCU, The Tick, Watchmen and Invincible, even though they all fall under the "superhero" genre.

So establish your genre conventions! Talk about what kind of things you do and don't want to happen. Maybe you want to be a hero and make sure no innocent bystander would die. That is a valid way to play, and as long as everyone is on the same page, it can be fun.

Not every game has to have character or NPC death be the price of failure. Sure, if people want that, it's a valid way of playing, but sometimes you do want to get invested in various characters and stay with them. You can also get a bit more creative with things...

Breaking kayfabe

Kayfabe is a term from professional wrestling that focuses on portrayals of wrestling events as if they were real. Basically, wrestlers always have to stay in character in front of the general public even if they are not in the ring not to break the illusion of wrestling.

In the World Wide Wrestling RPG that part of the genre is emulated - the outcomes of matches are fixed and you're supposed to play into it most of the time. However, you can explicitly Break Kayfabe to change the script and get what you want, but that can risk bad things happening to you since you're going against the genre convention.

If you want to have fun with your game (and everyone at the table similarly are into this), you can play around with that idea of breaking kayfabe. Basically, as long as the players follow their role in the story, the GM similarly is bound by the rules of the genre convention and can't hurt them too much. But then the players can start bending and breaking the rules slowly shifting the overton window to get what they want, at the cost of losing the protection of the genre because they are breaking kayfabe. This could set up an interesting "fall from grace" story akin to:

"A Street Thug Beat A God"

Or on the other hand you could make it into a genre deconstruction where the characters realise that being a superhero that doesn't kill doesn't make you the good guy. There is a good amount of stuff that can be done with this kind of premise.

Conclusions

So in conclusion, make sure you establish boundaries of what everyone at the table is comfortable with, have a chat about what kind of things you want to see within those boundaries, and if you're feeling like toying with those assumptions, see what comes when you tear them down methodically.